By HENRY COLT
Sentinel Staff Writer
When Alana Peterson got the email last month that she’d been named to Alaska’s Top 40 Under 40, she didn’t have much time to think about it. Moments before, she’d received a different type of news: her younger sister was about to give birth.
That Friday, the 34-year-old executive director of the Juneau-based nonprofit Spruce Root Inc. and co-owner of two cafes in Sitka rushed to the hospital to coach her sister through the beginning of two days of labor; on Saturday, she rushed home to throw a birthday party for one of her daughters, then back to the hospital in time to see her sister give birth to a baby girl; on Sunday, she slept in; on Monday, she got to her desk, looked at the email more closely, and thought, “Wow.”
“My first instinct was, ‘Who nominated me?’ ” Peterson said in an interview Monday. “I still don’t know who it was – I’m pretty sure it was my co-workers at Spruce Root, but no one will admit to it. I just think it’s really sweet that someone would take that time.”
The Alaska Journal of Commerce said there were 145 nominations and more than 900 pages of supporting material for the 40 spots in its annual list of the state’s top young professionals. Peterson, who has twice been a nominee but never before a winner, is the only Sitkan – and only representative of Southeast – on this year’s Anchorage-heavy list.
From left, Alana Peterson,4-year-old Esmee, 8-year-old Lia and Jose Figueroa stand outside the Backdoor Cafe. (Photo provided)
That Peterson feels more honored by her coworkers’ gesture than by the award itself speaks to her character: she’s a team player, or, to be more specific, a team captain.
Well, a captain of three teams. (Four if you count her family.) Spruce Root has a full-time staff of seven in Juneau. Her Sitka enterprises are the Backdoor Cafe, behind Old Harbor Books, and the Fisheye Cafe in the Seward Street Mall.
On a usual morning, her alarm goes off between 6 and 7, and, while she’s still in bed, Peterson will skim through her texts, her Google chat, and each of her four (yes, four!) work email addresses – “to put out any fires,” she says. A “fire” is something that demands immediate attention, like needing to fill the shift of a sick employee. Between the Backdoor, Fisheye, and Spruce Root, fires are frequent.
Then she’ll head to the kitchen and cook breakfast for her daughters, 8-year-old Lia and 4-year-old Esmee.
Her husband, Jose Figueroa, will sometimes hurry home from the Backdoor, where he oversees the impressive baking operation, to help get Lia and Esmee ready for school. She and Figueroa met when she was a 23-year-old Peace Corps volunteer and he was a college student in Peru, his home country.
In 2012, they moved to Sitka – Peterson’s childhood home – and got married. Figueroa, a brand-new U.S. citizen who was still learning English, faced a tough market for living-wage jobs. “A lot of the motivation was to get him employed,” Peterson said, commenting on their joint decision to buy the Backdoor in 2014, after a year in Arizona during which Peterson earned a master’s degree in business administration. She ran the business operation, Figueroa ran the baking operation, and they co-ran the parenting operation.
After breakfast, Peterson will head straight to the Backdoor, where her general manager, Sotera Perez, will make her an Americano (“I try to stick to just one cup a day”) and clue her in on café-related issues: the new fridge is acting up, someone just quit, tea bag filters need to be ordered – and so do tip sheets, catering forms, seven spices, and that special wooden spatula that just disappeared.
Then she’ll head upstairs to her small office above the Backdoor, and, sitting on a silver yoga ball, attack the day’s work.
On Monday that work included grinding away at a to-do list of 100-plus items and responding to emails on all four of her email addresses.
“Oh, right, that’s due today,” she said, speaking about a tourism contract she needed to review on behalf of Spruce Root, which is dedicated to helping Southeast Alaskan businesses thrive. Peterson got involved with Spruce Root when, as an employee of the for-profit Alaska Native corporation Sealaska, she was tasked with helping get the then-fledgling nonprofit off the ground.
Each Monday, she has a group phone call with the entire Spruce Root team, and each week she has a one-on-one phone call with every Spruce Root employee.
Lunchtime is often spent at Fisheye, her newest venture, which she and Caitlin Way bought in 2018. She’ll grab a salad, smoothie, crepe, or some avocado toast, and check in with the on-the-ground team. Sometimes, though, these quick check-ins morph into operating the cash register or making orders to help see Fisheye through its lunchtime rush.
Then, it’s back to the office for more phone calls, Skype conferences, emails, and to-do-list whittling. “I’m sort of constantly on call,” she says.
On a usual day, the last thing Peterson does before leaving the Backdoor is check the till, “to make sure everything’s kosher from the financial side.”
But the last few weeks haven’t been usual. Peterson is nine months pregnant. Due to pregnancy-related insomnia, she hasn’t been setting an alarm in the mornings. She hasn’t been drinking her usual Americano – since the beginning of her pregnancy, she says, something about it has tasted different.
But she has been chipping away at her 100-item to-do list. She says every item needs to be finished before March 10, the earliest date her baby boy is expected to be born.
